“In the group, students sent each other memes and other images mocking sexual assault, the Holocaust, and the deaths of children, according to screenshots of the chat obtained by The Crimson. Some of the messages joked that abusing children was sexually arousing, while others had punchlines directed at specific ethnic or racial groups. One called the hypothetical hanging of a Mexican child ‘piñata time.'”

Rachael Dane, a Harvard representative, told Business Insider that the university did not “comment publicly on the admissions status of individual applicants.”

The students were told in April that their acceptances were rescinded, according to The Crimson.

The group in question seems to be a spinoff of a more “lighthearted” Facebook group chat for prospective students to share memes, according to The Crimson. To join the “dark” group chat, students reportedly had to “post provocative memes in the larger messaging group.”

“They were like, ‘Oh, you have to send a meme to the original group to prove that you could get into the new one,'” Cassandra Luca, an incoming freshman who was part of the first group but not the “dark” group, told The Crimson. “This was a ‘just because we got into Harvard doesn’t mean we can’t have fun’ kind of thing.”

Labrie eventually was found not guilty of the main sexual-assault charges, but he was found guilty of a misdemeanor statutory rape charge and a charge related to using a computer to entice a minor.

“Harvard admission is contingent on five conditions enumerated for students upon their acceptance — including one which stipulates admission will be revoked ‘if you engage in behavior that brings into question your honesty, maturity, or moral character,'” Marlyn McGrath Lewis, Harvard’s director of undergraduate admissions, told The Crimson in 2003, referring to a case of an accepted student accused of plagiarism.

“Innocent until proven guilty is a concept and standard within the criminal-justice system and does not restrict a private school unless that school has voluntarily bound itself to such a high and exacting standard of fairness,” Harvey Silverglate, a local lawyer who has advised Harvard students, told The Crimson in an email.